Seven months after Ilham Tohti disappeared into custody, the Uighur academic
has finally been charged with 'separatism'

Chinese prosecutors have finally filed charges against a Beijing-based professor who they accuse of trying to foment an independence movement in the far western region of Xinjiang.

A brief statement on the website of the prosecutor's office in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, said 44-year-old Ilham Tohti, an ethnic Uighur, would face trial for separatism, a charge that can carry 10 years to life in prison.

There was no mention of the seven students who disappeared alongside Mr Tohti when he was taken away by the police in January.

For several years, Mr Tohti has been a moderate voice of dissent over the Communist party's policies in Xinjiang.

A professor of Economics at Beijing's Ethnic Minorities university, he has been the only mainstream figure brave enough to speak out against acts that have repressed the region's ethnic Uighur population. He also ran the only forum for open debate on Xinjiang, Uighurbiz.

However, as Beijing hardened its line on Xinjiang in response to a wave of terrorist attacks, Mr Tohti became increasingly vulnerable to state reprisals.

Last year, plain-clothed police officers brazenly rammed his car while he was driving with his wife and children, aged 7 and 3.

When Mr Tohti challenged the police, gesturing at his crying children, the agent shrugged then swore at him. "We don't care," he quoted the agent as saying. "We want to kill your whole family."

In January, he was seized by 40 police officers from his home near the university campus in Beijing, punched and dragged away.

He was held for six months before his lawyers were permitted to see him.

They said he had been put in leg shackles for the first 20 days of his detention, that he had not been given halal food, and that he now suffers problems with his heart, his liver, his nose, his throat and his waist.

"The decision to indict a man like Ilham Tohti, who is known for trying to bridge divides, on such a serious charge shows how far China's human rights have deteriorated in the past months," said Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch. "It sends precisely the wrong signal to Uighurs when tensions are at an all-time high."

Separately, there has been confusion over a clash in the west of Xinjiang on Monday. On Wednesday, the government said 22 attackers had been shot and 41 arrested after a terrorist attempt that left at least ten civilians dead.

However, the World Uyghur Congress, a US-based pro-Uighur exile group claimed nearly 100 people had been left dead when "Uighurs rose up to resist China's extreme ruling policy and were met with armed repression resulting in dead and injured on both sides".